Lisa Keeton (Elizabeth Bishop)
Lisa recently graduated from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with a BA in Theater and Dance and made a mad dash for the greatest city in the Northwest. Favorite Seattle roles include Rosannah DeLuce in Brilliant Traces, Candy in The Complex, Linda Rotunda in Savage in Limbo, and Hwel in The Weird Sisters. She can also be seen performing in Unexpected Production's long form ensemble, Fat Kid Magic. Lisa would like to thank Hayley and Katrin for bringing this project to Seattle and Randy for helping put it all together.
David S. Klein (Ezra Pound)
David has been a professional actor for 42 years, in Seattle for the past 26, where he has performed at the larger theaters – Seattle Rep, ACT, Intiman and Seattle Children’s Theater - as well as many, many smaller ones. Favorite Seattle roles include Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman at CHAC, Krapp in Krapp’s Last Tape at the Rep, Shylock in Merchant of Venice at Seattle Shakespeare Company, and Keyes in Double Indemnity at Book-It.
Other highlights of his career include reading Hanukah stories with NPR’s Susan Stamberg at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, chanting OM behind Swami Satchidananda at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, appearances at avant-garde festivals in Wroclaw, Poland and Baltimore, Maryland in the 70’s and running a children’s theater in rural Vermont that specialized in gender-neutral casting, which allowed him to play both Jack’s mother and the giant’s wife (with a female Jack) in Jack and the Beanstalk.
Other highlights of his career include reading Hanukah stories with NPR’s Susan Stamberg at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, chanting OM behind Swami Satchidananda at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, appearances at avant-garde festivals in Wroclaw, Poland and Baltimore, Maryland in the 70’s and running a children’s theater in rural Vermont that specialized in gender-neutral casting, which allowed him to play both Jack’s mother and the giant’s wife (with a female Jack) in Jack and the Beanstalk.
Hayley Heaton (Playwright)
Hayley Heaton is a poet and playwright living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Heaton was educated at The University of Utah, Cambridge University, and The New School in New York City. Her first chapbook, hubbub, was published in 2004 and she has since published The French 75 (an essay about a potent champagne cocktail) and Nineteen Days of Blaise (a collection of mistranslated poetry). Heaton’s work can also be found in several online and print journals. Her forthcoming projects are all collaborations with book artists (Amber Heaton, Jen Sorenson, and Paul Alessini) and include: a small collection of poems about insects titled Kill Jar, a series of sexy haiku called Proof, and Sunny Side, a crime story written in verse from two different perspectives. She is also working on a new play about Albert Barnes and a collection of interactive poems set in a luxury hotel.
Katrin Hilbe (Director)
Katrin directs Opera, Operetta, Contemporary Music Theatre, Plays, in Europe and the US. Her latest projects were the multi-media event Fraktale Sommernacht with the International Lab for Opera and Media Werdenberg in Switzerland and Allen Davis III’ play Oasis with The Dramatic Question in NYC. Between 2007-2010 she was the primary Assistant Director for Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. With her company, ManyTracks, Katrin produced and directed The Man in the Newspaper Hat by Hayley Heaton and a performance-on-book of Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Death – Take1 in her translation. The Man will have a five week run in Seattle this fall, in co-production with Unexpected Productions. Katrin is Artistic Director of International Relations for The Midtown International Theatre Festival, member of the Dramatists Guild of America, LPTW, The WorkShop Theater Company, a mentee of Theatre Resources Unlimited and an alumni of Directors Lab West. She works as a translator in the languages German, English, Italian and French and writes for reviewbroadway.com. More information on www.manytracks.org and www.katrinhilbe.com
ManyTracks (Producer)
Since its inception in 2009, ManyTracks has developed Hayley Heaton’s play The Man in the Newspaper Hat, a two-character play inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s “Visits to St.Elizabeths”, which was presented in the spring of 09 at the 45th Street Theater. Katrin Hilbe’s new translation of Georg Büchner’s Dantons Tod was presented as a performance-on-book in December 2009 as Danton’s Death – Take 1. Following H.L. Mencken’s dictum that “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”, ManyTracks is interested in projects that defy easy alignment. Be it complex political questions - see the French Revolution in Danton), questionable characters - as in The Man in the Newspaper Hat ‘s exploration into Ezra Pound the genius with despicable politics, or simply complicated relationships between difficult people as portrayed in Eleemosynary are what sparks our interest. ManyTracks has no political agenda, no beliefs other than the steadfast conviction, that it’s the questions that matter, not the answers. We want our audience to leave the theatre talking about our shows, take them and the issues they raise back into their lives. The world is a complex place, and for every position, there exists its polar opposite. As long as we talk, arms rest.
Theater Lexicon (Co-Producer)
Theater Lexicon is an independent theatre company in Seattle dedicated to developing and performing collaborative, ensemble-based work. Theater Lexicon balances creating original scripts through spontaneous exploration, incorporating spontaneity into existing or found texts and creating documentary based performance. Theater Lexicon uses all forms of media, live performance, theatrical techniques and audience interaction appropriate to each production.
Under the direction of Unexpected Production's Artistic Director, Randy Dixon, Theater Lexicon debuted in 2008 with The Complex, followed by Brilliant Traces, and its most recent success, John Patrick Shanley's Savage in Limbo.
Under the direction of Unexpected Production's Artistic Director, Randy Dixon, Theater Lexicon debuted in 2008 with The Complex, followed by Brilliant Traces, and its most recent success, John Patrick Shanley's Savage in Limbo.